21ST CENTURY STILL LIFE

This series of flower and fruit still life visually resembles 17th century still-life painting, but once we look closer, we notice that the natural elements in the image are not real but actually made with a plastic tablecloth that has flower and fruit printed on it.

In the classical times a still-life painting existed to remind the living that they only had a limited time on this earth. In this work the notion of ephemeral is reversed by the plastic material; as we know, plastic can take hundreds of years to decompose.

The series is a visual commentary on today's image driven consumerism and materialistic culture where the obsession for perfection make the fake often seem more ideal than the real.

INSPIRED BY CARMEN MIRANDA

The Brazilian singer and performer Carmen Miranda was one of the highest-earning women in Hollywood in the 1940s. She was known for her extravagant costumes, beautiful voice, and radiating performances. With her unusual clothing and latin accent, her character represented a kind of stereotype of an exotic woman from Latin America. Nick-named as "The Brazilian Bombshell", Carmen Miranda was particularly known for her signature fruit hat outfit she wore in many films.

The fruit becomes a symbol for femininity and sensuality when it is repeatedly presented in the context of Carmen Miranda. It becomes the sign for the exotic, feminine, and sensuous Other. In my photographs inspired by Carmen Miranda I play with the notions of femininity and seductiveness, the beauty and the grotesque.

DEMOISELLES DE PARIS

'Demoiselles de Paris' translates as 'young Parisian ladies'. The series consists of images of typical French cakes each accompanied by an announcement found in the personal ads column of the Parisian paper 'A Nous Paris' (2006).

The Juxtaposition of the image and the text evoke to question what femininity is and how it is seen in a certain cultural context. The work aims to exemplify the parallel between the idea of the cake and the idea of the woman: as for both of them, beauty and form is of upmost importance, and they both aim to seduce.

DOMESTIC FANTASTIC

THE DARK COLLECTION

The Dark Collection plays with the idea that an ordinary object can look like something completely different depending on the angle, lighting, and the viewer's psychological predisposition. The series explores the process of visual perception; what happens between seeing an object and understanding what we see.

The photographs make up a "Wunderkammer" -like collection of things that somehow look as if they were alive, reminiscent of the feeling from childhood when waiting to fall asleep in a darkened room and the shadows started growing faces.

In order to make sense of the world we tend to interpret abstract shapes as bodies and faces. In our minds the inanimate can become somehow animated, perhaps even alive. We relate to images and objects by projecting our being and emotions onto them, and reversely by recognizing parts of ourselves in things. It is in this context that the project explores the notion of empathy in relation to vision.

For me the photograph is a selected point of view, a chosen representation of the real object. In the manner that my imagery may evoke multiple interpretations, it also illustrates the fickle nature of vision. How we perceive reality is greatly influenced by our personality, psychological predisposition, and our emotions. As James Elkins says: "Ultimately, seeing alters the thing that is seen and transforms the seer. Seeing is metamorphosis, not mechanism."